Blathnaid O'Dea

From a traditional standalone, grid-scale battery energy storage (BESS) in Arizona to an initiative turning second-life electric vehicle batteries into grid storage, these US projects are doubling down on grid support.

Heat pumps could offer annual energy savings up to €800 ($924) in the EU, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). But deployment is very uneven in both residential and industrial settings, which the IEA attributes to market structures and policy design, which varies from country to country.

A LUT University study finds that data centers could be powered continuously by intermittent renewables like wind and solar when paired with backup generation and demand-side flexibility. However, achieving firm supply would require major overbuild, significant curtailment, and careful siting to keep costs competitive with other baseload sources.

Hagag Europe and Airengy's Romania project will harness the latter's long duration energy storage AirBattery technology with underground salt caverns to eventually reach 5 GWh storage capacity. Airengy told ESS News commercial operation is likely to begin in early 2028.

ContourGlobal entered the United Kingdom with its purchase of the 2 GWh Wallace battery in Scotland. Its development pipeline across the UK for solar, storage and wind projects is 800 MW, CEO Antonio Cammisecra told ESS News, adding that the "sophisticated" UK market will become one of its biggest focuses.

Ireland's solar market is continuing to mature rapidly, according to Solar Ireland's 2026 annual report which also identified the emergence of

Enphase Energy representative Andy Newbold told pv magazine the company sees its distributed solid-state transformer model supporting utility-scale solar, batteries, and high-power EV charging eventually. The initial focus, however, will be on data centers.

Ireland's 2.3 GW storage pipeline could deliver economic benefits of up to €102 million ($116.6 million), says a report by consultants AFRY, with Energy Storage Ireland calling it the "strongest independent economic case yet made for accelerating storage deployment."

Solar consultant Scott McKechnie told pv magazine his updated solar and storage calculator tool, AirPV, is designed to cut through the information noise homeowners have to wade through if they want to save money and get shorter payback time on their panels.

Construction will begin on Giga Storage's Green Turtle battery energy storage (BESS) project in September following the financial close on 9 July.